By James Hargrove
A cinematic science fiction game with heavy fantasy overtones, Beta Maxx X Supernova Edition from Andrew Chirgwin and Halfling Caravan Games is a simple yet robust game system that strives to recreate 80s and 90s science fiction television action on the tabletop.
While I’m not entirely convinced that Beta Maxx X Supernova Edition achieves this stated goal mechanically, the system is easy to digest and works, which wins big points with me. I downloaded another game recently that was straight up word salad and I felt like I’d just burned my money. I would have no issue at all paying the asking price for Beta Maxx X Supernova Edition if I wanted a good science fiction roleplaying game.
Full Disclosure: I was provided my copy of Beta Maxx X Supernova Edition gratis, but not in exchange for a review – just because the creator is a generous, friendly, person.
Characters
The art and layout of the PDF is good… very good for a self-published game. It puts the art and layout of my own games to shame and, frankly, I’ve seen some products from bigger publishers that look awful compared to Beta Maxx X Supernova Edition. This not only speaks to the care with which the game was produced, but the pride that the creator took in producing it.
Characters are created by allocating points to Traits, Styles, and Skills – all of which are laid out on simple tables, where the values are cross-referenced to determine how many 10-sided dice you roll when resolving action (Traits/Styles) and how the die roll target is modified (skills lower die roll targets). Said die roll targets (i.e. what counts as a success) are variable, with guidance provided for the GM regarding such things and a player must roll a specified number of successes to resolve an action or conflict. These are the nuts and bolts of challenge resolution.
The one complaint that I have is that there is very little guidance on how to determine/assign the number of successes needed to successfully resolve a non-combat/non-magic challenge. This is a bit weird because there is a ton of great advice on how to adjudicate other aspects of conflict, with special attention paid to common TV tropes. I’m not entirely sure what number of successes should be assigned to different challenges, other than that a “low success” challenge only requires one success (this is the only explicit guidance given in this regard that I could find).
Combat
Combat is resolved as a logical extension of the basic challenge resolution rules and does, thankfully, directly address the concern that I raise above. Every weapon has a default difficulty (target number) based on how difficult the weapon is to use and, when making an attack, the number of successes scored by the attacker are compared to those scored by the defender to determine how much potential damage is dealt. Defender successes remove attacker successes and any remaining attacker successes are then rolled as dice by the defender, vs the damage rating of a weapon – any successes (dice rolls under the damage rating) are converted to fatigue, and failures are converted to injuries.
So…. let’s talk about fatigue and injuries. Fatigue is, in a nutshell, non-lethal damage and injuries are, conversely, lethal damage. All characters begin play being able to sustain 3 fatigue and 3 injuries by default and this number is modified by ranks in Durability (a Body trait based on the Endurance style). A higher Durability rating means that a character can endure more fatigue and suffer more injuries before being taken out of the action. Simple.
Magic is, also, an extension of the base challenge resolution rules and, like combat, comes hardcoded with explicit target numbers and successes linked to individual spells. Casting a magic spell is just another challenge and I like this. It makes digesting the magic rules, as they are, extremely easy. This section could have easily devolved into fractured mechanical sub-systems, but it didn’t need to and, thankfully, doesn’t. While the spell list isn’t particularly large, it is easy to understand and provides a good template for creating your own spells.
One thing I was thrilled about in Beta Maxx X Supernova Edition are the rules for character growth, mainly because I’ve been using a very similar system for years in (oddly) Original D&D. Characters in Beta Maxx X Supernova Edition grow by achieving player-defined goals for their character. For instance:
“I want to be wealthy enough that I can buy a proper ship. I’d love to have a Cadigan Izaak. No more schlepping around in some crummy freighter.”
XP is rewarded for achieving such goals during play, which players may then spend to advance their character’s Traits and Skills. Very cool and a decidedly different take on your typical RPG advancement.
There are, of course, simple rules for net running, cybernetics, and vehicles (including vehicular combat), but most of these rules consist of good advice, rather than actual mechanics (and the advice is very good). In fact, I’d like to take a minute to talk about the advice.
The advice and guidance (with the one exception I mentioned earlier) in Beta Maxx X Supernova Edition is really, really, good. Andrew Chirgwin clearly has some extensive experience running and playing tabletop RPGs and that experience is on full display here. Different strokes for different folks, of course, but Andrew says so many right things here, things that took me decades of playing and running games to learn (e.g. “If there’s no time pressure, put the dice away.”) I’m super-thrilled to see this stuff front and center. I find many game authors choose not to offer this kind of guidance for fear of alienating possible consumers. But it is, in my opinion, great advice that should be on full display.
Conclusion:
If you’re looking for an easy to understand yet mechanically rich game for science-fiction tinged with fantasy elements, Beta Maxx X Supernova Edition is a no-brainer purchase. Buy this game.
https://halfling-caravan-games.itch.io/beta-maxx-x
